Philadelphia Fund to Sell Texaco Stock

The board of Philadelphia’s pension funds voted to divest $5.5 million worth of Texaco Inc. stock, citing tapes of alleged racial slurs by executives at the nation’s third-largest oil company. “People are very offended as to what was revealed on the Texaco tapes and we don’t want to be part of that corporate culture,” pension board Chairman Ben Hayllar said. The move comes a week after the Philadelphia City Council voted in a nonbinding resolution to boycott Texaco and divest itself of all holdings in the oil company. The board is to review the move after a year to see if the oil company has made progress in minority hiring and promotions. It would then consider purchasing Texaco stock again. Last week, Texaco reached a $176-million settlement of a 1994 lawsuit brought by a group of black employees accusing the company of systematically discriminating against blacks and denying them promotions. The value of the stock to be divested was not immediately known.